1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a MIS (metal-insulator-semiconductor) semiconductor device such as a MOS field-effect transistor and to a manufacturing method therefor. The MIS semiconductor device according to the present invention is used in various semiconductor integrated circuits.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the size reduction in design rules of MIS semiconductor devices, a strong electric field between the drain and the channel now causes a hot carrier injection phenomenon. Degradations in characteristics due to the size reduction in design rules (i.e., shortening of the channel) are generally called short channel effects. To suppress the short channel effects, as shown in FIG. 4, a MIS field effect transistor having lightly doped impurity regions (lightly doped drain) 406 and 407 has been developed.
In this type of device, the LDDs 406 and 407 having an impurity concentration lower than a source 404 and a drain 405 are provided between the source 404 and a channel forming region and between the drain 405 and the channel forming region. Having an effect of reducing the electric field, the LDDs 406 and 407 can suppress generation of hot carriers.
Conventionally, the LDDs 406 and 407 shown in FIG. 4 are formed in the following manner. After a gate electrode 401 is formed, lightly doped impurity regions are formed by doping. Then, side walls 402 are formed with an insulating material such as silicon oxide, and the source and drain 404 and 405 are formed by conducting doping in a self-aligned manner using the side walls 402 as a mask.
However, since the gate electrode 401 does not extends over the LDDs 406 and 407, the further channel reduction has caused a phenomenon in which hot carriers are trapped in portions of a gate insulating film 403 over the LDDs 406 and 407. The trapping of hot carriers, particularly hot electrons, reverses the conductivity type of the LDDs 406 and 407, to unavoidably causes such short channel effects as a threshold voltage variation, an increase of the subthreshold coefficient, and a reduction of the punch-through breakdown voltage.
To solve the above problem, the overlap LDD (GOLD) structure has been proposed in which the LDDs are also covered with the gate electrode. By employing this structure, there can be avoided the above-mentioned degradation in characteristics which would otherwise be caused by hot carriers trapped in the gate electrode over the LDDs.
As the MIS field-effect transistors having the GOLD structure, there was reported an IT-LDD structure (T. Y. Huang: IEDM Tech. Digest 742 (1986)). The IT-LDD structure means a LDD structure having an inverse-T gate electrode. FIGS. 3A to 3E schematically show a manufacturing method of such a transistor.
After a field insulating film 302 and a gate insulating film 303 are formed on a semiconductor substrate 301, a conductive coating 304 of, for instance, polycrystalline silicon is formed. (FIG. 3A)
A gate electrode 306 is then formed by etching the conductive coating 304 to a proper extent. Care should be taken not to etch the conductive coating 304 completely; that is, only portions 305 indicated by dashed lines should be etched to leave portions having a proper thickness (100 to 1,000 xc3x85) around the gate electrode 304, to thereby form a thin conductive coating 307. Therefore, this etching step is very difficult.
LDDs 308 and 309 are formed by through-doping that is performed through the thin conductive coating 307 and the gate insulating film 303. (FIG. 3B)
A coating 310 is then formed on the entire surface with such a material as silicon oxide. (FIG. 3C)
Subsequently, side walls 312 are formed by anisotropically etching the coating 310 in the same manner as in the case of producing the conventional LDD structure. The thin conductive coating 307 is also etched in this etching step. A source 313 and a drain 314 are formed by conducting doping in a self-aligned manner using the side walls 312 as a mask. (FIG. 3D)
Thereafter, an interlayer insulating film 315, a source electrode/wiring 316, and a drain electrode/wiring 317 are formed to complete a MIS field-effect transistor. (FIG. 3E)
The resulting structure is called IT-LDD because the gate electrode portion assumes an inverse-T as is apparent from the figures. In the IT-LDD structure, in which the thinner portions of the gate electrode exist over the LDDs, the carrier density in the LDD surfaces can be controlled to a certain extent from the gate electrode. As a result, even if the impurity concentration of the LDDs is lowered, there can be reduced the possibility of a reduction of the mutual conductance due to a series resistance of the LDDs or variations of the device characteristics due to hot carriers injected into the portions of the insulating film over the LDDs.
These advantages are not specific to the IT-LDD structure, but common to all kinds of GOLD structures. Capable of lowering the impurity concentration of the LDDs, the GOLD structure has a large effect of reducing the electric field strength. Further, since the LDDs can be made shallow, the GOLD structure can suppress the short channel effects and the punch-through.
There are no effective GOLD structure manufacturing methods other than the method of the IT-LDD structure. Although the IT-LDD structure have many advantages described above, it is very difficult to produce it. particular, it is very difficult to control the etching of the conductive coating 307 (see FIG. 3B). If there occurs a variation of the thickness of the thin conductive coating 307 among substrates or within a substrate, the impurity concentration of the source and drain varies, resulting in variations of the transistor characteristics.
The present invention has been made in view of the above problems in the art, and has an object of presenting a GOLD structure which can be produced more easily.
According to the present invention, a manufacturing method of a MIS semiconductor device comprises the steps of:
(1) forming a gate insulating film on a surface of a semiconductor;
(2) forming a gate electrode central portion;
(3) forming a lightly doped impurity region (LDD) in the semiconductor in a self-aligned manner using the gate electrode central portion as a mask;
(4) forming a conductive coating mainly made of silicon;
(5) forming a side wall spacer on a side face of the gate electrode central portion by anisotropically or semi-anisotropically etching the conductive coating in an atmosphere including a halogen fluoride; and
(6) forming a source or a drain in a self-aligned manner using the side wall as a mask.
The MIS semiconductor device produced by the above method is characterized by:
the gate electrode central portion formed on the gate insulating film;
the gate electrode side portion mainly made of silicon and formed in close contact with the side face of the gate electrode central portion; and
the LDD formed in the semiconductor under the gate electrode side portion between the drain (or source) and the channel forming region.
The MIS semiconductor device is further characterized in that a single insulating film mainly made of silicon oxide is formed on the drain, source, channel forming region, and LDD.
In the semiconductor device manufacturing method according to the present invention, the side wall is formed with a conductive material mainly made of silicon (i.e., formed with silicon having purity of more than 95%). That is, a GOLD structure is obtained by making the side wall a part of the gate electrode. To obtain such a structure, after a conductive coating mainly made of silicon is so formed as to cover a portion to become the gate electrode central portion, anisotropic or semi-anisotropic etching is performed in an atmosphere including a halogen fluoride. A halogen fluoride is represented by a chemical formula XFn, where X is halogen excluding fluorine and n is an integer.
For example, ClF, ClF3, BrF, BrF3, IF and IF3 may be used.
In the above description, the xe2x80x9cgate electrode central portionxe2x80x9d is a part of a gate electrode and corresponds to the gate electrode 401 of the conventional device shown in FIG. 4. Also, in the present invention, the portion (402 in FIG. 4) corresponding to the side wall of the conventional LDD structure is made of a conductive material having silicon as the main component. That portion is called the gate electrode side portion as well as the side wall with a consideration that it is another part of the gate electrode.
It is preferred that the gate electrode central portion be mainly made of silicon, i.e., made of silicon having purity of more than 95%.
It is difficult to stop the etching for forming the side wall by means of the gate insulating film mainly made of silicon oxide, possibly resulting in overetching of the substrate. This is due to the facts that ordinary dry etching cannot provide a sufficiently large selective etching ratio of silicon to silicon oxide, and that the thickness of the gate insulating film is smaller (about 1/10) than that of the gate electrode (i.e., side wall).
The investigations of the inventors of the present invention have revealed that the above problems can be solved by etching with a halogen fluoride. This is based on the fact that while a halogen fluoride has a strong action of etching silicon, it has only a weak action of etching silicon oxide.
According to the present invention, in the etching for forming the side wall, it is possible to make the selective etching ratio of the side wall to the gate insulating film sufficiently large. As a result, overetching of not only the semiconductor substrate but also the gate insulating film can be avoided.
However, while it is possible to perform isotropic etching using a halogen fluoride gas in a normal gas phase, it cannot realize anisotropic or semi-anisotropic etching. After conducting investigations under various conditions, the inventors have found that the anisotropy of gas etching can be improved by additionally using plasma excitation in a weak RIE (reactive ion etching) mode. This is based on the feature that plasma-damaged portion are likely etched by a halogen fluoride. The anisotropy of etching can be improved by causing plasma ions or electrodes to strike the substrate vertically. In a typical example, it was possible to make the vertical etching rate 2 to 10 times faster than the horizontal one.
For the purpose of anisotropic etching, it is preferred that an atmosphere be mixed with a gas, such as an argon gas, which helps generate plasma. It is further preferred to provide a mechanism capable of applying ions after accelerating those. However, it should be noted that excessive plasma excitation causes reduction of the selective etching ratio of silicon to silicon oxide.
In the conventional dry etching, the function of plasma is to generate an active species such as a fluoride ion. On the other hand, in the etching of the present invention, plasma serves only to activate the surface to be etched, i.e., facilitate its etching. The etching itself is performed by a halogen fluoride. In other words, the halogen fluoride gas may not be necessarily converted to a plasma. Rather, it is only necessary to create a plasma which is sufficient to treat a surface so that the surface states on an upper surface and a side surface differ from each other.
The present invention is characterized in that anisotropic etching is performed by using a halogen fluoride. As for the details of the anisotropic etching, there may be used methods other than the above-mentioned method of using plasma.